Content warning: this article contains graphic images and descriptions of violence some people may find distressing

One night last December, 38-year-old Mohammad Jamal Atiya Banat left his home in Northern Gaza and never returned, vanishing without a trace. For his devastated wife and six children, the suffering has been immeasurable. No information or answers as to his fate have surfaced in Jabalia, where Mohammad went missing, and every passing day brings more sadness for his family.

His wife said:

No one told us anything. We searched everywhere, asked everyone we know, but there’s no trace. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead, we don’t even know where to look.

Gaza’s missing: the immeasurable pain of loved ones vanishing without a trace

Since October 2023 when Israel began its genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, there have been many thousands of people just like Mohammad, whose fates remain unclear.

Sarah Davies, spokesperson for the Israel and Occupied Territories branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), says people who do not know the fate of a loved one experience one of the worst pains in war.

She said:

You’re living in horrific circumstances, where you don’t have access to enough food, safe water, shelter or medical care but, at the same time, you’re under a huge emotional burden.

As a human, you think of all the horrible things that could have happened to your loved one, and it’s really about the lack of closure for people- they don’t know what has happened. They don’t know if their loved one is still alive, or if they are injured somewhere, or even if they’re perfectly fine and just haven’t been able to contact them. This feeling doesn’t really leave you.

Around the world we’ve worked with people who have been separated from their family members for 20 years and, at some point, some people do get reunited and their whole life changes but, in Gaza right now, there are thousands of people who don’t have any closure.

The ICRC has had over 15,000 registered cases of missing people from Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023, 10,000 of these from Gaza alone. More than 3200 of these cases have been closed, either because the families were able to reconnect themselves, or the ICRC was able to put them back in touch with their loved ones. So, currently, over 6500 cases are still open.

Israel separating loved ones amidst airstrikes and attacks

According to a statement from Gaza’s government media office in May, Israel has dropped 100,000 tonnes of explosives on the Strip since October 2023. During these airstrikes, entire buildings can get reduced to rubble, and people have been buried under the debris. Sometimes family members live in the same building but on different floors, so if that building is damaged or impacted by hostilities, people may not know what has happened to their loved ones.

If there is a mass casualty event, members of the same family may unknowingly be taken to different hospitals. This can easily happen, especially if ambulances are unable to access the impacted area or deal with the vast numbers of individuals in urgent need of assistance. People then often jump in and help, taking injured individuals on donkey carts to the closest medical point available.

Sometimes, individuals die of their wounds in hospital, or are declared dead upon arrival, and if they do not have any ID, or a family member or friend with them to identify their body, their loved ones are most likely missing them. ICRC has access to the patient lists in what is left of Gaza’s hospitals, and provides a hotline number, which people can call to request that a tracing case be opened.

ICRC has a central tracing agency, and a database of people from all around the world who have been registered by their family members as missing and, in Gaza, the organisation works with the health facilities across the Strip to try and locate them. The tracing requests ask for a lot of information, such as what the missing person was last wearing, when and where they were last seen, and any identifying marks or features, in case of the worst case scenario for their loved ones.

Evacuation orders: at night, with no lights, and limited communications

Evacuation orders can cause great hardship and difficulties for people, and the resulting chaos can result in unintended separation. Davies explained:

If there are evacuation orders, a family has to move. People have to pack up everything they own and carry it in their hands or in whatever bags they have. Phones are really the only form of direct contact people have to their loved ones who might be in other areas, but oftentimes things like chargers can get left behind and phones can get dropped.

In the chaos of evacuation orders, the elderly, the sick and the injured struggle to keep up but still need to move. It’s very chaotic, especially if it happens at nighttime. When it’s dark, there are no lights- there’s no street lights in Gaza, there’s only fires and people’s flashlights or phones.

So it’s very easy for people to get separated, especially kids, who tend to get separated from their parents. While luckily, some people do find their way back to each other, others find it more difficult, particularly when there are communication interruptions in Gaza, which we have seen recently.

Ghazi Al-Majdalawi is the founder and lead researcher at the Palestinian Centre for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared (PCMFD), which was launched in February this year, during the temporary ceasefire. This human rights organisation not only aims to be the main reference point in Palestine for documenting and uncovering the fate of missing and forcibly disappeared Palestinians, but also speaks up for their rights and those of their families, while highlighting Israel’s many crimes.

Al-Majdalawi said:

The disappearance of a dear person leaves complex feelings of loss, fear, and hope, and the pain and uncertainty causes long-term psychological and physical exhaustion for those who are waiting for news of life or death.

Many family members of those who are missing suffer from sleep disorders, constant anxiety, and confusion in their daily lives, especially because of the absence of medical and psychological support in the Gaza Strip.

The unknown fate of missing and forcibly disappeared Palestinians

Over the last 21 months, thousands of people in Gaza have become victims of Israel’s arbitrary, prolonged, and incommunicado detention. Occupation forces, along with the police and Prison Services, refuse to disclose the numbers detained, or their whereabouts, condition, or the legal grounds and reasons for their arrest. These forcibly disappeared people, who are often shackled and blindfolded, are held in secret, have no access to legal representation or effective judicial review, and are often victims of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

No one is spared. Women, children, and older people have been forcibly disappeared, as have journalists – such as Nidal al-Waheidi and Haitham Abdelwahed, who were both detained on October 7 while reporting, and hundreds of medics – such as Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken away by occupation forces last December, along with other hospital staff and patients following a deadly raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Enforced disappearances first emerged as a state practice with Hitler in 1941, and are a crime against humanity under international law. They are frequently used as a strategy to spread terror within communities and, according to Palestinian prisoner advocacy organisations, are a central and persistent aspect of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

People going missing near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites

PCMFD, which recently published detailed information and pictures of hundreds of cases of missing people and enforced disappearances that have occurred since the start of the genocide in Gaza, has documented a sharp increase in reported cases of starving Palestinians going missing recently, without any trace, while looking for food at the US-backed military controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution points, which have been described by the UN as ‘death traps’. GHF’s operations are complicit in violations of international law and have been marred by violence and hundreds of fatalities.

According to international humanitarian law and other legal frameworks, families have the right to receive information about the fate of missing persons, and access grave sites if the missing person has died, while the fourth Geneva Convention guarantees the right to recover and bury the dead and obligates all parties to respect human dignity, even in death. In addition, further protections are provided by the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), which emphasises the right of families to know the truth about their missing relatives, and to seek justice.

But this has not happened in Gaza.

Instead, the occupation deliberately withholds any information from the families of the missing, while mass graves, containing hundreds of bodies showing signs of torture and execution, have been uncovered. The Institute of Palestine Studies research paper titled Mass Graves in Gaza: Evidence of Genocidal Violence, explains that Israel has used mass graves to cover up their crimes, desecrate the dead, and erase Palestinian presence and history, not only during the Nakba in 1948, but through the past 77 years.

Thousands missing in Gaza: a major humanitarian tragedy

Civilians continue to be forcibly displaced from large areas of the Strip by the occupation forces, who estimate that they will soon have taken control of 75% of the territory. At the same time, specialised equipment to recover bodies trapped under bombed out buildings are prevented from entering the enclave. This means the vast majority of the thousands of bodies which remain buried under the rubble, or strewn on the streets, will not have a dignified burial, and will not be recovered until they are decomposed, and unidentifiable. Yet the occupation also prevents the entry of DNA testing materials, making it extremely difficult to identify what remains of the corpses.

Al-Majdalawi and his team at PCMFD have documented dozens of airstrikes which not only target the very few bits of remaining equipment left in the Strip which can be used to retrieve bodies from under the rubble, but also the civil defence crews while they have been carrying out their essential work.

They believe the issue of missing persons in Gaza is a major humanitarian tragedy, and are demanding urgent international intervention to pressure Israel to allow the immediate and unconditional entry of heavy equipment and specialised search and rescue teams into the Strip, as well as to disclose the fate of the remaining missing persons.

They are also calling on UNICEF and the ICRC to lead an immediate large scale international operation to look for, recover and document the missing, and also provide essential psychological and social support for the families of Gaza’s missing, whose pain will not go away until their loved ones are found.

Featured image and additional images supplied

By Charlie Jaay

This post was originally published on Canary.